Seamus Heaney Analysis of FollowerThe poem Follower by Seamus Heaney shows a man reminiscing about his childhood on the farm, and the skill of his father, whom he longed to impress and follow in his footsteps. Heaney displays an admiration of his father during his prime years, and uses an intelligent choice of language to show the entirety of his father’s expertise.
The poem is written in the form of six stanza, each a quatrain. The first three stanzas consist of Heaney reminiscing about his father working the land when he was a child, it is written in the past tense. Heaney uses enjambment to allow the poem to flow, and create a sense of an infinite story. This suggests that their lives keep on going, and that his father never stopped working , just as the lines of the poem have a run on line quality. The final three stanzas consist of Heaney reflecting on himself upon the farm, and his utter inadequateness as a farmers’ son. The final two lines are written in the present tense, thus showing that time has passed since his days on the farm. The form in which it is written reflects upon the relationship between the father and son by showing that the son had been impressed by his fathers expertise in the first three stanzas, continuing by showing his will to be like him, and then finally concluding by stating that their relationship remains one of following, however the situation is inverted.
Heaney uses a great amount of agricultural jargon to describe his father working and the tools that he used, he uses terms such as “shafts and the furrow”, “steel-pointed sock”, and “headrig”. The use of this sort of language shows the reader that his father truly was an expert at what he did, and he was the best person in the region to do the job. Heaney enforces the fact that his father was the crème de la crème of agricultural workers by stating that his father was “An expert.” . The poem is written in a very simple way, not using many metaphors, or other figurative devices. This technique shows the simplicity of their relationship, and portrays the fact that the father does not need to have an important, well paying job for the son to respect him and look up to him. In the last stanza, the words “tripping, falling, yapping” are placed together to place emphasis on what a nuisance the son was, the repeated use of
n-t–. The poem then begins in the form the child is told to think, as the author puts it, “like animals in a zoo.””
